


[@lanceinurpants] reblogged this from [@nopainnokogain]

by c0cunt



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crushes, M/M, Mutual Pining, Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 04:49:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7604077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c0cunt/pseuds/c0cunt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance has a problem, and that problem is commonly known as nopainnokogain on Tumblr.<br/>Keith also has a problem, known as lanceinurpants on Tumblr.  </p><p>Neither of them really know what to do about the other, so they talk shit in the tags when they reblog the other's selfies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. @lanceinurpants

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aceveria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceveria/gifts), [HedonistInk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HedonistInk/gifts).



> so! I'm going to blame most of this on AceQueenM and MihaelKai. They're both dragged me into fucking Voltron hell when I was quite content on sticking to AoT/SnK. But now we're here, so enjoy this while i go drown myself in a bowl of ice cream.
> 
> Also, if anyone on Tumblr actually has the urls that i gave these two, i'm sorry.

  Lance was still up at midnight, aimlessly scrolling on his dashboard, when a notification popped up on the corner of his screen.  “nopainnokogain reblogged your photo!” - it stated cheerfully, and Lance couldn’t help a tiny hoot of delight as he went to see what his favorite mutual had to say about the photo he’d posted earlier that day.

  It was one of Lance’s normal posts that kogain (as Lance almost affectionately referred to him as, at least in his mind) reblogged, and had probably tagged with a long stream of annoyed chatter.  At least it was the one Lance had posted earlier that he felt pretty good about himself about:  The one right after working out with Hunk from yesterday, where they were both sweaty and grinning up at the camera, even though Lance had intentionally pointed it a bit further down.  Lance had his shirt bundled up under his armpit, after having stripped it off to wipe down his face, and he’d been proud of how defined his abs had looked compared to earlier that year.  Plus, his shorts had been hanging low on his hips, and that had been more than enough reason to toss it up on the internet for his followers to look at.  And the notes had poured in, one for almost every twenty followers he had, but Lance hadn’t really cared what anyone had said about it up until kogain reblogged it with only two tags:  “loudmouth mcgee” (which was Lance’s personal tag on kogain’s Tumblr, and having a personal tag on kogain's blog made Lance feel a little bit fuzzy inside over), and “holy shit”.

  Even after the normal “kogain reblogged one of my selfies again aaaaaaaaaa”-feelings that Lance flailed his way through, the other tag on the photo made him frown.  What could kogain have possibly  _ meant _ by “holy shit”?  Was it a good “holy shit”, or like the sort of “holy shit” you feel when you’re on the verge of death?  The insecure part of Lance (which was about 85% of him, honestly) was convinced that it was a bad “holy shit”.  On the other hand, the confident part of Lance was convinced that kogain meant it in a positive way.  But with no proof in either direction, he decided to just go to the index of nopainnokogain’s Tumblr and see what else had been posted that day.

  Lance scrolled past the photo of himself on kogain’s blog, lost interest halfway through a pair of reblogged text posts that were lower on the page, before hitting kogain’s newest selfie.  It wasn’t one of his post workout selfies, which was normally what kogain posted, but was more like Lance’s usual outfit selfies.  It had obviously been taken by someone else, as kogain was entirely in the shot, and he was scowling at whomever held the camera.  The photo was in black and white, but Lance was pretty sure that kogain was wearing his favorite (absolutely ridiculous) cropped jacket, the red and white one with the stupidly high popped collar.  And instead of kogain’s normal, stupid looking mullet, his hair was tied back loosely with a scrap of fabric.  Lance was pretty sure his brain had shut down by the time he looked at kogain’s eyes, which seemed even larger and darker than they normally were in his other photos.

  “Ffffuck me,” Lance groaned lowly as he shoved his laptop away and stared at the ceiling.  He should’ve known better than to look at kogain’s eyes:  They were his goddamn weakness, and he felt his heart flutter a tiny bit when he peeked back down at the photo.  kogain appeared to be in the same thin t-shirt and jeans that he usually wore, and not for the first time Lance wondered if he just had a whole dresser full of the same black t-shirts, jeans, and the one “fancy” jacket.  It would definitely have made kogain’s outfit planning a lot easier, if that were the case.  Before Lance could let himself get more sidetracked wondering about the other man’s outfits, he hit the reblog button and immediately scrolled as far down as possible so he wouldn’t be trapped by kogain’s eyes again.  

  He popped in the usual tag he used for kogain (“dumbass mullet”), before pausing to think about what else he should tag it as.  Well, it was a black and white picture, so “grayscale” seemed appropriate.  Lance nodded to himself as the tag showed up after typing “gray” in, and frowned as he was once again unsure what other tags to add.  His heart was telling him to put something mushy, to let kogain  _ know _ that he was practically dying of thirst over here.  But most of Lance had already decided that kogain was way out of his league, and knew that it wasn’t really an option.  He wished it was, sort of, but also at the same time he didn’t want his heart stomped on by this really pretty guy who worked out daily and could probably snap Lance’s wrist in half with a single pinkie.

  So, he did “the chicken’s route” (as Hunk called it).  Lance’s fingers quickly typed out a string of insults, ranging from how kogain’s hair looked even dumber when it was pulled up than when it was free, to asking why kogain felt it was necessary to put a black and white filter on the photo.  After his fingers were done with the insults, Lance paused for another second, and tapped out “also youre quite ‘holy shit’ too”, and hit enter.  Before he could get cold feet, he swiftly reblogged it, and slammed the lid of his laptop down with fiercely.  In the morning, he’d edit the tags, and deny he’d ever tagged that if asked by anyone.  He’d done it enough times that it wouldn’t be the first time he denied how he tagged shit.


	2. @nopainnokogain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the second chapter~ It's hella long compared to Lance's chapter, but!!! you get some Keith and Shiro interaction, so u can't b upset with me over that.
> 
> Now it's time for me to rest, thank u goodnight

  Keith was still grumpy, even after the hot shower that left his skin raw.  Shiro had taken his phone before they had gotten to the gym, and refused to give it back.  While Keith was protesting, Shiro had tapped the camera on, taken a photo of him, edited it, _and_ posted it to his Tumblr.  Keith hadn’t even realized it until after they’d parted ways, not putting together the phone stealing with the sudden barrage of notifications that had drained his battery.  The phone itself was slowly charging next to his tiny, decrepit laptop, that he was going to have to use to access Tumblr and take the damn photo down.

  It took nearly five minutes for the damn thing to boot up, while Keith paced around his tiny apartment.  The stupid browser took another ten minutes to open and be usable (during which time Keith took advantage of heat up leftovers for dinner).  The whole ordeal, just to get to the login page for Tumblr, took a grand total of twenty minutes, and Keith wanted to bash his face in.  Logging in was another three minute and twenty-seven second ordeal, and the browser almost crashed because someone had reblogged a gifset that was making it run even slower.  It was a nightmare, and Keith hated every single second.  But before he went straight to his page, he noticed that lanceinurpants had posted another selfie.

  More than a little curious (and excited; lanceinurpants was _definitely_ worth ogling), Keith waited impatiently to be able to scroll a little further down.  The tiny bit of of the photo visible before the page responded showed lance’s nose, only the top of the man’s lip visible before the page decided it was ready to scroll down.  Keith sucked in a breath as lance’s bare chest came into view, and he almost wanted to slam his laptop closed before he did something rash.  Like have thoughts about how nice the other man’s pecs looked, or he would be unable to tear his eyes away from the sparse trail of hair that dipped into lance’s shorts that were slung way too low over his hips to be considered decent.  Keith’s brain still had those thoughts, as the page slowly scrolled down to show Keith the entire photo, which even showed off lance’s skinny chicken legs (which were actually pretty toned) and his dirty sneakers.  He needed was a glass of water, stat.

  The photo wasn’t obviously a post-workout progress photo, but the small caption underneath it that said “starting to look pretty good, if i do say so myself” made it obvious.  Keith definitely agreed with that statement as well, his bowl of food forgotten on the far end of his bed as he pulled the laptop closer.  Definitely not so that he could get a closer look at lance’s photo.  Definitely not so that Keith could get a closer look at the way lance’s lips looked, which he both loved and hated at the same time.  It looked as though lance had been chewing as his lips before the photo was taken, and Keith couldn’t help thinking how they would look somewhere _less innocent._  He wondered if lance really had been chewing his lips or not, as he looked at the other person in the photo behind lance.  They were leaning down as if they were trying to get in frame as well, but hadn’t quite managed it, their darker skin almost popping against the sweat soaked, yellow long sleeved shirt they were wearing.  In Keith’s mind, the other person was still leaning way too close to be considered platonic, pressed up against lance’s back as they were.  He had absolutely no right to be jealous, but here he was.

  Keith took a deep breath before he squinted at the tags lance had used on his photo.  Of course, it was tagged as “selfie”, but the second tag, “sorry hunk i wanted the progress immortalized” caught Keith’s eye more.  He had seen lance before tagging someone that was apparently called hunk (what sort of name was that?) in past text posts, none of which indicated any sort of relationship, but...It couldn’t hurt to be on the more cautious side, could it?  It couldn’t, Keith decided, clicking on lance’s url to see if he’d changed his page description (which usually read “-NSync playing in the distance- BI BI BI” followed by “i’m single but not desperate gtfo”).  Since lance updated it almost daily, with some sort of joke or (on one memorable occasion that had made Keith squirm in delight) how much he wanted to punch Keith, he would’ve probably updated it as soon as he wasn’t single, right?  It was exactly as Keith remembered it last being, and the addition of “if i were any more chill i’d probably turn into an ice cube” made Keith laugh the tiniest bit.  But it also meant that Keith had no need to be jealous of lance’s friend hunk, and he felt kinda bad that he had.

  Annoyed with himself for jumping to conclusions, Keith pushed his laptop away and moodily finished his cold dinner.  He wasn’t able to stop glancing back at the screen every two seconds, but he did ignore it for a bit as he thought about what to do.  He was definitely going to reblog it, that was guaranteed, but what to tag it with?  Obviously “loudmouth mcgee”, that was lance’s tag on his blog, but what else could he tag it with, without trying too hard?  Shiro would know what to do, Keith decided, carelessly putting his bowl aside and diving for his phone.  It probably wasn’t a good idea to use it while it was still charging, but this was an emergency.  He drummed his fingers impatiently as it rang, and he perked up when he heard the _click_ of the call connecting.

  “I have a problem,” Keith said with no preamble once he heard Shiro let out a grumbled sort of noise on the other end.  There was the sound of (probably) sheets shuffling, and a groan of annoyance before Shiro actually strung together words.

  “Keith, what the fuck.  It’s two in the morning.  Go to bed,” Shiro ordered, waiting just a second for Keith to explain why he was calling so late at night (early in the morning?).

  “lanceinurpants posted a new photo,” Keith groaned and the sound was echoed from Shiro’s end.  “So you’ve seen it!  It’s a huge fucking problem!”  Keith pointed empathetically at his laptop as he spoke, even though Shiro couldn’t see him.  

  “The only problem I have is that you can’t handle a crush,” Shiro said dryly.  Before Keith could deny that it _really wasn’t a goddamn crush,_ Shiro continued.  “You’ve called me every night this week after you’ve seen that Lance guy post a new selfie, and asked me what you should tag it with when you reblog it.  If that isn’t a crush, I will eat a goddamn hedgehog.”

  Keith let out an unwilling, honking sort of laugh, before he sighed.  He really didn’t want to admit that it was a crush...But Shiro was right.  He had a huge honking crush on fucking lanceinurpants.  And it was ridiculous.  He knew he was being ridiculous.  But it still didn’t solve his problem

  “What should I tag it with?”  Keith asked sulkily as he twisted the charger cord.

  “The hell if I know,” Shiro groused, still pretty salty about having to wake up and have this stupid conversation.  Keith knew that he wasn’t done, and was rewarded when Shiro sighed before talking again.  “I mean, you’re still in the ‘he can never know’ phase of your stupid crush, right?  What’ve you two been doing, talking shit in the tags?  Just fuckin, I don’t know, do that?  Unless you _want_ him to know that you like him.”

  Keith groaned at the thought, but it wasn’t a bad idea.  lanceinurpants _was_ a generally good guy, even if he was a loudmouthed asshole two time zones away.  “Thanks Shiro, good night,” Keith sighed out, hanging up before Shiro could return the sentiment or go on another rant about how Keith needed to stop calling him so late.

  Which left Keith to go back to his dashboard, and stare moodily at the tag section.  Maybe it would be nice to just...Compliment the other guy?  Subtly?  Yeah, that sounded like a good idea.  Nodding to himself, Keith typed up several different compliments, but...None of them really felt right.  With an annoyed huff, Keith just put “holy shit” and slammed the reblog button.  And then, cowardly, he tossed his laptop aside and stared up at the ceiling, trying to figure out exactly _how_ he had gotten here. 

 

* * *

 

  Keith had zoned out, and only realized it when his phone buzzed loudly from being fully charged.  He blinked in the darkness of the room, and felt blindly along until he found his phone and unplugged it, while dragging his pointer finger along the track pad of his laptop.  Surprisingly, the laptop woke quickly, showing Keith’s dashboard as the fans roared to life, and he remembered why he had gone onto Tumblr in the first place.  He couldn’t help refreshing the dash, though, and just his luck, someone had reblogged the selfie Shiro had posted of him earlier.  Keith let out an annoyed huff as the page loaded a bit, the mouse already hovering over the drop down box to his blog dashboard, when he realized that the person who had reblogged his photo was lanceinurpants.

  Anxiety wormed its way into Keith’s belly as he slowly scrolled down to read the tags that lance had left.  He chuckled at “dumbass mullet”, his own personal tag on lance’s blog, and rolled his eyes as he read all the increasingly ridiculous tag ranting that had been slapped on.  The tag asking why his bandanna was holding back his hair made Keith laugh the slightest bit, but the last tag at the very end of the long string of tags made him freeze.  A simple “also youre quite ‘holy shit’ too” made his face heat up, and he felt the immediate need to either puke or scream.  So that meant that lance _had_ figured out that he meant it as a compliment!  And lance was usually complaining about how he was terrible at figuring shit out; obviously a white lie.

  But now, Keith was in another predicament.  Should he send a message to lance, or just...Let it go?  He frowned mightily at that, and shook his head.  There was only so much confidence Keith could have in one goddamn night, and that was too much for him.  Plus, he should’ve gone to sleep hours ago.  Maybe in the morning he’d say something, he decided, frowning suspiciously as his laptop was more than willing to logoff and shutdown.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (This has been added in after posting initially like an hour ago)
> 
> 1) The reason Lance's name isn't capitalized throughout most of the fic, is that Keith is thinking in terms of his url, and doesn't actually know Lance's first name. It might've seemed odd to those reading, and I guess I didn't make that clear in the fic x.x
> 
> 2) Next chapter is going to be an epilogue-type thing, and will take place 4-5 months after the previous two chapters.


	3. @nopainnokogain is calling @lanceinurpants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance is a bit nervous about his first video call with Keith. So he distracts himself with cleaning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay!!!!  
> here we are!!!!  
> this chapter would've come out sooner if words weren't so annoying like 95% of the time. But thanks to Kai, I did the thing. And here we are. So I hope y'all like it~

  Lance was stalling.  It was stupid, hella fucking stupid, but he was doing  _ anything _ he could think to do instead of sending a video call request to  nopainnoko Keith for the first time.  Which is how Lance ended up in just a jockstrap, in his kitchen, doing the dishes.  He  _ hated _ cleaning, but it was the only thing left to do instead of sending the call request a fucking half hour before the time they’d agreed on.  He  _ really _ didn’t want to do that, and look like an overeager fool, so now Lance was wrist-deep in gross, soapy water.  

  The dishes took no time at all; Lance might not like cleaning, but he knew how to clean a pot quickly and efficiently.  Which meant he had time to do something else before calling.  So he broke out the vacuum, and soon the threadbare carpets in the apartment no longer had dust bunnies the size of small mountains.  Somewhere in there, Lance turned on the decrepit radio that his mom had given him when he moved out, and soon he was swept away by chores he could be doing.  He almost forgot that he had been stalling, until he was collecting his dirty clothes from the corner in his bedroom, and happened to see the clock on his bedside table.

  With a curse, Lance flung himself at his laptop, begging it to boot up faster.  He was supposed to call Keith  _ a half hour ago. _  Shit.  Before Lance could settle in and get too comfy, he remembered that he’d left the water running in the goddamn bathtub (because he had, foolishly, thought he’d have enough time to have a quick rinse before calling).  He sprinted away to turn it off, just as Skype loaded and signed him in.  Almost as soon as his hand touched the knob, Skype let him know that there was a video call coming in, and Lance instantly regretted setting up his Skype to automatically accept all calls from contacts.

  “Shit shit shit shit shit,” Lance chanted as he barreled back into his bedroom, tripping over a stray pair of dirty underwear that was on his floor, and nearly face planting into his bed.

  “Uh...Hello?”  The voice that came through Lance’s speakers sounded more than a little confused.  Lance popped up onto the bed like a wound-up spring, and he immediately allowed his webcam to be used.  He focused on Keith’s neutral, slightly grainy face in the middle of his screen, and couldn’t help a nervous sort of chuckle as his webcam turned on.

  “Hey, uh, sorry for that dude.  Kinda lost track of time,” Lance said, rubbing the back of his sweaty neck.  Keith’s face had suddenly gone from neutral, to sort of flabbergasted within the space of two seconds, and it was kind of making Lance nervous.  Was he not what Keith expected, somehow?  Keith  _ knew _ what he looked like, so it probably wasn’t that...Right? Lance squinted as Keith continued to just stare, and he wondered if his Skype had frozen.  Peering closer, Lance could see Keith’s slack jaw moving up and down the slightest bit.

  “Dude, did your sound cut out?”  Lance asked as he quickly looked through his Skype settings and his laptop’s settings.  The program (surprisingly, for once) didn’t seem to be acting up, nor was the sound on the laptop in general, but Keith was still imitating a frozen goldfish on his screen.  But Lance’s prompting seemed to have knocked Keith out of his daze, as he blinked once, twice, and then started yelling loud enough to wake the dead.

  “Dude, put some fucking clothes on!”  Keith yelped, averting his eyes (even though he wanted to just keep staring).  Lance jumped from the sheer volume of Keith’s voice through the speakers, and he was forcibly reminded that he was still in nothing but his jockstrap.

  “Oh fuck holy shit I’m sorry!”  Lance babbled as he jumped away from the computer, turning quickly to find a pair of pants and a shirt or something to throw on.  There was a loud strangled sound that came from the computer when he turned around, and Lance’s face burned as he hid his ass behind his hands and scuttled out of view of the camera like an embarrassed and very motivated crab.  There was a pair of basketball shorts near the door that didn’t seem too dirty, and a semi-clean tank top that said “suns out guns out” that Lance threw on carelessly, all the while babbling about how sorry he was to Keith.  Eventually, Lance’s apologies petered out, but he was still too embarrassed to go back in front of the webcam, tugging nervously at the hem of his shirt.  At least there hadn’t been the sound of the call ending, at least.

  “...Holy shit,” Keith wheezed out, like a deflating balloon.  “I knew you were hot but holy fuck.”  Now that made Lance do a double take, and flop onto his bed with a wide-eyed look.

  “Wait a sec, you think I’m really hot?”  Lance asked almost disbelievingly.  He kind of wanted to tease Keith, whose face had also turned red, but at the same time he was genuinely asking.  Keith let out an annoyed noise as he buried his face in his hands, a muffled affirmative noise barely loud enough to be heard.  Lance let out a loud, short bark of a laugh, that made Keith jump and swear as he was startled out of his hands, and that just made Lance laugh more until Keith was glaring properly at him.

  “If you’re going to laugh, I can take that compliment back, you dickbag,” Keith grumbled, which only made Lance laugh again, but much harder.  Keith tried to keep the stern look on his face, but it eventually melted into a few chuckles as well.  It was hard to keep a smile off of his face when he was  _ looking _ at and  _ talking _ to Lance.  There was no way that Keith couldn’t keep a dopey grin off of his face.  Lance calmed down eventually, as he grinned widely at Keith’s pixelated form, leaning his chin into the palm of his hand.

  “So...You like me.”  Lance stated coyly.  Keith tried to glare again, but Lance batted his eyes at the other man, who couldn’t help an annoyed snort as he shook his head.

  “As if that wasn’t obvious now.”  He huffed, dragging a hand through his hair almost nervously.  Lance blinked at his candidness, but he couldn’t help another laugh.  It wasn’t intended to be mocking, but Keith glared at him, and Lance raised his hands in a placating manner.

  “I like you too you nerd, no need to look so pissed,”  Lance couldn’t help laughing at how Keith’s face went quickly between annoyance, to surprise, to almost delighted.  They were silent for a few minutes, before Keith broke it almost nervously.

  “So...What do we do?  I mean, you’re in Arizona?”  Keith paused for a second, and Lance nodded.  “And I’m up in Delaware, so…”  He trailed off, but Lance knew what he was getting at.  And Lance  _ really _ wanted to kiss Keith, whose lips looked entirely too soft for them to be real.  He couldn’t do that all the way in fucking Arizona.

  “Well, I mean...We could like, do the long distance thing?”  Lance asked, not entirely sure of what that would entail.  Keith let out a neutral hum, eyes narrowed in thought, before he slowly nodded.

 “We can give it a shot,” Keith said with a slight shrug.  “I mean, you’re hot and you like me, and I’m hot and I like you,” Keith hurried to explain, as Lance narrowed his eyes at the other man, “I just...I don’t know how a long distance thing works.  But I’d be willing to try it.”

  Lance kept his eyes narrow for a second, making Keith squirm, before he grinned dopily at the other man.  “I think I like the sound of that,”  He agreed, unable to help the butterflies that fluttered up from the genuine smile on Keith’s face.  Lance had to do  _ something _ to keep himself from blushing at this point, so he blurted out whatever came to mind.  Which was probably a very bad idea.

  “But just because we’re together, don’t expect any dick pics.  I don’t put out on the first date,” Lance said seriously.  Keith blinked rapidly for a second, before letting out the absolute  _ ugliest _ guffaw that Lance had ever heard in his life.  But it felt like victory, seeing Keith blush from his words.  Lance planned to find out every way to make Keith Kogane blush, for as long as he was able to.


End file.
